1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is data processing, or, more specifically, methods, apparatus, and products for implementing a RAID array.
2. Description of Related Art
The development of the EDVAC computer system of 1948 is often cited as the beginning of the computer era. Since that time, computer systems have evolved into extremely complicated devices. Today's computers are much more sophisticated than early systems such as the EDVAC. Computer systems typically include a combination of hardware and software components, application programs, operating systems, processors, buses, memory, input/output devices, and so on. As advances in semiconductor processing and computer architecture push the performance of the computer higher and higher, more sophisticated computer software has evolved to take advantage of the higher performance of the hardware, resulting in computer systems today that are much more powerful than just a few years ago.
One of the areas in which progress has been made is in non-volatile computer memory such as hard disk drives. A single internal hard disk drive, however, lacks redundancy. To gain redundancy, either more drives need to be added to the system, which requires more space and power, or external drives may be connected for redundancy, RAID arrays, SAN arrays, and so on. Another mechanism to gain similar functionality is to use a Cluster File System such as GFS. However, nodes that participate in a CFS are unable to boot from the file system or operate independently of system status, since it exists at the operating system level.